(Actually… They sold the spectrum, but are keeping the station on-line. That’s mostly how I listened. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see other universities take that route. And I’m also not surprised to see KDFC in the shenanigans, but that’s a separate story.)

Yes, they will eventually have an online station up and running, BUT what people are not understanding is that the COMMUNITY will not be represented there. It will be strictly for students, as a teaching lab. The people who have been on the air for 20+ years are out on their ass for good. To me (I was at the meeting) it seemed clear that the money was only a bonus; the REAL motivation was to get rid of the community influence and give it back to the students… Not that the students were ever excluded in the first place…

Ugh, that makes it much worse and utterly ridiculous. The college station here in Atlanta that is 100% student (WRAS) has sports as a back-up. Other stations have some non-student involvement *plus* sports broadcasts. There simply are not enough volunteers, something that likely isn’t a surprise to anyone commenting here…

I’m at the other end of the country from SF, but, the story still hits a nerve with me because I wonder: Is EVERYTHING for sale in this country?
For crying out loud, where will it end? Back in the late 80s the University of Florida’s “Florida Field” was renamed after some old geezer who gave the university $15,000,000 to put his name on it. I wondered if the university would, in exchange for $20,000,000, rename the stadium “We Fuck Ducks Stadium”?
Father Privett, will you take a few rows of pews out of the church and install a Starbucks? Will Arlington National Cemetery become Gatorade Gardens? Hey, maybe the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor could sell naming rights to the Mitsubishi company!
OK, deep breath, deep breath, calm down……..

UGH! Yes, we’ve been following this story here in Houston and you have our sympathy. We are experiencing the same thing here. Our beloved KTRU, after 40 years, was sold out in a secret deal last year without student or community input for what is really a pathetic sum by the Rice University administration and currently out fate rests on the FCC. The deal here is that our station will be sold to the local NPR affiliate who will drop the classical programming onto KTRU’s frequency and converting its signal to canned NPR programming.

Our station was supposed to go silent in December but we are still here as we have a lot of dedicated people fighting to stop the deal. Our fate rests on the FCC right now but the point is, we’ve heard the EXACT same arguments from Rice university’s PR people and they hold no more water here than they do in SF so keep up the good fight – it’s your station don’t let them take it from you.

Jason has a point. I’ve even started to listen to streaming stations through my iPhone plugged into my car radio direct. Most interstates (around here) have good cell coverage so I don’t have to put up with AM radio when my playlists get tiresome. If they continue streaming, I won’t notice it in my car – apart from the fact that I’m listening to it 900 miles away from SF.

Rice university in Houston just sold its frequency as well (as mentioned by Ben) to be an all-classical station so that the other NPR station can be all talk. It’s kind of a shame…I didn’t listen to it super often but it was one of the only truly original stations in town. Houston radio for the most part SUCKS! Especially considering the size of this town.